With the start of the college basketball season now upon us, preview content has hit its apex. You (the college basketball consumer) have been fed oodles of articles, videos and reels destined to show you the true title contenders, the breakout players to watch and maybe even the team that will cut down the nets in early April.
It goes without saying that this oversaturation of media is not evenly distributed amongst the 365 Division I teams. Power conferences receive the lion’s share of coverage, with the higher-end mid-major leagues soaking up most of what’s left. Inevitably, a couple teams each season enter the national eye after serving as afterthoughts from November to February.
Enter CBB Underground: a series where I try to find those teams before they heat up. Each article will focus on a different program that I believe is much better than their amount of coverage shows, and I’ll try to convince you to at least keep this team on your peripheral as you monitor the sport this season. Amidst a busy college basketball landscape, these are the leaders of its underground scene.
Kent State Golden Flashes
Overview
Get into a conversation (as many do) about the class of the Mid-American Conference, and it won’t be long before Kent State gets brought up.
It’s been 28 years since the program has ended a season with a losing record, and more often, they challenge for 20-win seasons and NCAA Tournament berths. Since the turn of the millennium, four different coaches have combined for six trips to the Big Dance in Kent, a testament to the culture and resources built. The most notable of those appearances was the Sweet 16 team of 2001-02, featuring then-head coach Stan Heath and a certain player who tried his hand on the gridiron after graduation.
Current head coach Rob Senderoff has been a mainstay on the bench for the Golden Flashes. A two-time assistant at the school, Senderoff was promoted to his current position in the spring of 2011 following Geno Ford’s departure for the same role at Bradley. All Senderoff has done since then is win the most games in school history, racking up nine 20-win seasons and becoming the second Kent State coach ever to go to March Madness twice. The more things change in college basketball, the more they stay the same in northeast Ohio.
As a former Kelvin Sampson assistant, it’s no surprise that physicality rules the day with Senderoff’s squads. No matter who winds up on the Golden Flashes roster each season, you can always expect to see quick ballhawking guards, physical wings and built big men down low. A way Senderoff uses those traits to his advantage comes via an aggressive philosophy on crashing the glass: since he became head coach, only once has his team finished outside the top 110 nationally in offensive rebounding percentage.
In the backcourt, Senderoff can’t get the freakish two-way guards that his mentor thrives on, so he instead focuses on volume shooters who can thrive as the center of attention on offense. Jalen Sullinger and Sincere Carry assumed that role over the last four years, and now Kent State will look for a new player to take the mantle.
With all his success, Senderoff maintains what can best be described as a hybrid approach to roster building. His program thus far has been a pillar of retention for mid-majors in the NIL/portal era: since COVID, just one 10+ point scorer (Michael Nuga) transferred out the following offseason. Once the key contributors affirm their loyalty, Senderoff then goes out to the portal to complete his roster puzzle, plucking out a couple transfers who can step up for his team in key areas. That gameplan went unchanged this summer.
Backcourt
As mentioned previously, Kent State’s found recent success with a lead guard running the show, and after Jalen Sullinger’s graduation, the player with the best odds of stepping up has to be Cian Medley.
Medley has the continuity factor in Senderoff’s offense, having played 27 minutes a game last year after coming in from Saint Louis. Vision and IQ are the strengths of the junior’s game, and he’s more than willing to be a pass-first point guard. Assist rates of 30.6 (59th in the nation) and 26.4 (153rd) prove that point.
The barrier preventing Medley from being an automatic impact player this season is his shooting. That’s no short fence, either, as the guard recorded a dreadful 39.1 effective field goal percentage (eFG%) last season. He doesn’t need to immediately become an efficient 15-point scorer for the Golden Flashes to shine in 2025-26, but shooting 42.7% at the rim and 25.7% from deep again is unacceptable.
Assuming Medley doesn’t turn into a marksman overnight, Kent State won’t have that uber-talented offensive guard they’ve become used to over the last half-decade. Medley’s passing, defense and leadership should make him the backcourt’s leader, but he needs a shooting guard to set up. This is where Niagara transfer Jahari Williamson could come into play.
After spending his freshman season as a reserve at Valparaiso, Williamson developed into a sniper with the Purple Eagles in 2024-25, finishing with a 40.2% 3PT on 4.3 attempts a night. On the wings specifically, the 6-foot-1 guard was one of the best shooters in the country, putting up absurd 82.3 and 72.4 eFG% numbers on the left and right wings, respectively.
Especially with returner Jamal Sumlin having suffered a season-ending injury in the offseason, it’s likely that these two will be the Golden Flashes’ starting guards during the season’s opening stretch. If so, it seems like they’ll have a symbiotic relationship, with Williamson filling in for Medley’s shooting struggles and Medley covering up some of his shooter’s defensive shortcomings.
The leading guard/forward hybrid on this team and the player who will likely start at the 3 is Morgan Safford. The graduate student came to Kent as an in-conference transfer from Miami (OH) last season, but after eight games, he was snakebitten with a season-ending torn labrum.
Before the injury, Safford was a key contributor for Kent State, putting up double-digit scoring in four games and snagging six rebounds a night even with his 6-foot-5 stature. His role on this season’s team will be that of a do-it-all wing, initiating offense off the glass and coming up with stops at multiple positions. While his scoring ability shouldn’t be forgotten, he has struggled with efficiency over the past couple seasons, meaning that his best work in 2025-26 might come off the ball.
Quinn Woidke is a true freshman point guard who could see early playing time behind Medley. The 6-foot-1 local product has been on Senderoff’s radar for years and picked the Golden Flashes over a couple prestigious mid-major programs. Woidke has been touted for his speed and shotmaking abilities, making him a nice alternative to Medley if he can get accustomed to the college game quickly.
On the other end of the experience spectrum, point guard Omer Hamama was a very late addition to the team, with his signing being announced less than a month ago. Little is known about the 22-year old besides his experience, having spent last season as a reserve in the second division of professional basketball in Israel.
The final player in this grouping is Brenden Moss, a redshirt junior who missed all of 2024-25 with injury. Moss’ slender 6-foot-4, 196-pound frame slots him in as a potential backup at the 2 or 3, but the guard struggled in 12 appearances two seasons ago and will need to show noticeable improvement to avoid getting jumped in the rotation.
Frontcourt
Here’s where things get fun.
Getting the dirty work done this year should be no issue for Kent State. Senderoff has two starters at the 4 and the 5 – Delrecco Gillespie and Rob Whaley Jr. – who are known space creators down low. These two share effective paint scoring, toughness and good rebounding acumen.
Oh yeah, they also share DNA: the two are cousins.
Gillespie is the main holdover in Kent and projects to be one of the stars of the MAC this season. The senior played sparingly in his first two seasons with the program, and even for the first three months of last season, he was nothing more than a key bench piece for the Golden Flashes.
Then, the calendar flipped to February and a new Gillespie emerged. Over the final 15 games of the season, the Michigan native averaged 11 points and 11 rebounds with seven double-doubles to boot. Three of those double-doubles came in Kent State’s NIT run, where Gillespie was going up against the likes of Maxime Raynaud and Miles Rubin. It didn’t matter the competition; he put up his numbers regardless.
The first key to Gillespie’s breakout was an already good rebounder becoming elite in the trait. The senior’s motor seems to be neverending, and when you watch him on the court, it feels feasible for him to corral in every single missed shot. He finished last season with a 14.8 OREB% and a 26.2 DREB%, both top-25 marks nationally.
Gillespie also became much more comfortable with the ball in his hands, which paid dividends for the Golden Flash offense. The big became an interior threat with a mix of power and finesse that caught opposing players off guard. Especially if he consistently gets to the right side of the paint (54 eFG% vs. 33% on the left side), Gillespie could put up some major numbers as this team’s top scoring option. Kent State will likely go as he goes this season on both ends of the floor, which isn’t too risky of a bet.
Whaley Jr. took a cross-country flight to join his cousin after spending two seasons at UNLV, the last of which ended prematurely due to a season-ending back injury. In 2023-24 though, the then-junior was a productive big in Kevin Kruger’s offense, putting up 7.6 points off of a 69.4% conversion rate at the rim. Especially on nights where Williamson and Safford can’t get their shots going, the cousins will be called upon for consistent post work, and their previous production suggests they’ll be well-equipped to handle that role.
Whereas Gillespie brings more visually appealing buckets to the table, Whaley Jr. scores primarily off brute force. While he is working to slim down from a currently listed 289 pounds, he’ll likely still end up at a weight that makes it easy to be a peoplemover. The playstyle could pay dividends against teams with the personnel to potentially slow Gillespie, of which there are a couple in the MAC. Whaley Jr. also comes in with a higher rim-protecting reputation than his cousin after putting up a 3.9% block rate in Vegas two seasons ago.
An intriguing breakout candidate for the Golden Flashes lies in Cincinnati transfer Rayvon Griffith. A top 75 recruit in the 2023 class, Griffith took a redshirt season with the Bearcats before playing sparingly in 2024-25. In those minutes, the rangy 6-foot-8 forward did his best work on defense while also showing some flashes as a slasher.
Now a level of competition down, Griffith looks to break out the athleticism and offensive tools that gave him such a high pedigree coming out of high school. If he can string together some sort of multi-level scoring, that’ll go a long way for a squad that wouldn’t mind having a forward draw defenders away from Gillespie and Whaley Jr.
Along with Woidke, Dezmon Briscoe is the other true freshman who’s expected to contribute from day one. The 6-foot-8 big operates out of the Gillespie mold as a physical two-way big man with an extremely high motor. Briscoe adds onto that game by being a very good rim protector, averaging an absurd 5.1 blocks for Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis last season. The high-three-star recruit initially committed to Iowa before flipping to Senderoff and Kent State.
There are two other true freshmen in the frontcourt for the Golden Flashes in Landon Vanderwarker and Jaymen Townsend. Vanderwarker is the more established prospect of the two, with the Golden Flashes beating out a series of suitors for the 6-foot-8 forward. Townsend is a prep school product who put up big numbers scoring and on the glass last season. He also initially decommitted from Kent and moved into the 2026 recruiting class, only to then recommit and reclass back up. Fun!
Rounding out this unit is Deandre Jones, a 6-foot-11 redshirt freshman who looks to crack the rotation in his second year under Senderoff. Jones received plenty of MAC interest coming out of Garfield Heights High School in Cleveland, and the big opted to remain close to home.
